A year later, Quebec opposition to shale gas is still fierce

Last December, when the committee examining the potential for shale gas exploration in Quebec held a series of information and exchange sessions with the public, few if any of the 500 participants seemed in the mood for information or exchange.

Opponents of the controversial process for extracting natural gas from deep inside Quebec’s Utica Shale claim not a single person who attended the sessions had a positive word to say about either the industry or the committee in charge of the government’s Strategic Environmental Assessment on shale gas.

In a typical exchange, Jacques Tétrault, a 59-yearold schoolteacher, told the panellists at the St. Hyacinthe meeting: “I don’t recognize the legitimacy of your committee, gentlemen. The criteria to sit on the committee should have been that you had to reside within two kilometres of a fracked well.”

Tétrault went on to question whether the committee would even evaluate alternatives to shale, or simply recommend ways the government can best avoid risk and make the most money on the resource.

A year ago, when Quebec Environment Minister Pierre Arcand announced the $7-million Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) on shale gas, he said it was in part to reassure the public that shale gas development will not go ahead in Quebec unless it is determined to be safe.

But a year into that process, opposition remains as fierce as ever.

While the industry is cautiously optimistic the review will provide a solid regulatory basis for exploration and commercialization to move ahead, deep suspicion about the process among the grassroots activists has made the committee itself a new lightning rod for criticism.

Robert Joly, who chairs the SEA committee, concedes its work got off to a rather rocky start.

“What we realized during those consultations was that essentially the committee was providing a kind of tribune for the public to express the concerns it has about the industry, and not just about the committee’s work,” he said.

A group of academics, calling itself the Collectif scientifique sur la question du gaz de schiste au Québec, has launched a series of conferences on issues around shale gas, mainly to address what its members consider the shortcomings of the SEA process.

Lucie Sauvé, a founding member of that 164-member collective and a Canada Research Chair in environmental education at the Université du Québec à Montréal, did not mince words at a recent news conference.

“The scientific collective obviously deplores the composition of the committee in charge of the (SEA). The majority of the members are affiliated with the government, which clearly has a prejudice in favour (of shale gas exploitation), or are more or less associated with the industry.

“There are no experts in health or finances, no representatives of the environmental groups or citizens’ groups.”

Over the past decade or so, the Quebec government has been keen to learn about the potential for shale gas exploitation in the massive Utica Shale deposit along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, between Montreal and Lévis.

The province is eager for new sources of revenue that resource development promises, whether it be the Plan Nord to open up vast swaths of northern Quebec to mining, extracting oil and gas from the Gulf of St. Lawrence or drilling for natural gas trapped in shale rock.

Quebecers use about 215 billion cubic feet of natural gas each year, all of it imported from Western Canada. New techniques for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking – pumping chemicalinfused water into the rock to free the gas – have made access easier and cheaper, so late in the last decade, oil and gas companies were flooding Quebec’s Natural Resources department with requests for exploration permits.

Between 2006 and 2010, some of those companies quietly drilled 18 exploratory wells on private property. Commercial extraction had not yet begun when cries of alarm started going off all along the Lower St. Lawrence.

Trouble with shale gas extraction was making news in the U.S. – contaminated water tables, gas leaks, noise and air pollution, explosions, even earthquakes – and Quebecers wanted no part in this new industry.

Dozens of citizens’ groups began organizing in towns and villages along the river, all clamouring for a moratorium on shale gas exploration, if not a complete ban.

Then in August 2011 the government commissioned its environmental watchdog, the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement, to spend six months examining the issue.

The BAPE’s final report – made public on March 8, 2011 – concluded that many fundamental questions could not be properly answered, because the environmental risks posed by drilling for shale gas in Quebec had not been sufficiently studied.

It recommended the government launch a more thorough investigation, a Strategic Environmental Assessment.

But the process meant to reassure the public is now under attack.

According to critics, the mandate is too broad and does not place enough emphasis on justifying the province’s need for shale gas.

Citizen groups and environmental organizations who had been most active on the shale file were angered when no one they recommended was named to the 11-member committee conducting the SEA while an employee of Talisman, one of the companies engaged in shale gas exploration, was included.

Opponents continue to demand a full moratorium on shale gas activity. Officials with both the environment and natural resources departments say no new projects have been approved in the past year, and the industry’s only activities in the province have been maintenance of existing operations.

The minister promised that no new shale gas projects would be approved during the 2½ years the SEA committee did its work, unless they were necessary for study purposes.

Activists say this is too hard to monitor, and fear the industry is carrying on its business as usual.

They charge the government is not assessing the potential of cleaner alternatives like biofuels from garbage dumps before spending $7 million to evaluate a fuel source fraught with risk.

Joly said the committee members have valid expertise and will seek input from other experts and the public when needed.

He said the SEA will include a comparison of different fuel sources, such as biomethanization, but he stressed that the committee’s mandate is not to change the government’s energy policy.

“What must be understood is that we don’t have a mandate to redo the government’s energy policy,” he said

The committee’s final report is to be submitted to the government by November 2013.

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